District 9 (2009)

DISTRICT 9  (2009)  ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Neill Blomkamp
    Sharlto Copley, Vanessa Haywood,
    Jason Cope, Nathalie Boltt
When an alien space station stalls out over Johannesburg, its crew and passengers are captured and transported to the surface, where they're confined in a squalid detention camp called District 9. Twenty years later, the aliens - called "prawns," because of the way they look - are about to be relocated to another camp, and that's where the story kicks in. In a movie coming from South Africa, the metaphor is obvious. The movie itself is like "Close Encounters" or "E.T." combined with a shoot-'em-up, blow-'em-apart action fest. It works surprisingly well, for all the gratuitous carnage involved. Just don't be surprised if you feel more sympathy for its alien characters than its human ones.